Im trying to install oracle 10g on to OS X Lion, I have previous achieved this on snow leopard with the following http://blog.rayapps.com/2009/09/14/how-to-install-oracle-database-10g-on-mac-os-x-snow-leopard/ The issue im having is that the ulimit settings in the oracle/.bash_profile cannot be modified. I have the following in the bash_profile: export DISPLAY=:0.0 export ORACLE_BASE=$HOME umask 022 # must match `sysctl kern.maxprocperuid` ulimit -Hu 512 ulimit -Su 512 # must match `sysctl kern.maxfilesperproc` ulimit -Hn 10240 ulimit -Sn 10240 Upon applying the bash_profile settings . ~/.bash_profile i get the following error: -bash: ulimit: max user processes: cannot be modify limit: Invalid argument This then results in $ sqlplus / as sysdba not functioning correctly with a Segmentation fault: 11 The output of $ ulimit -a core file size (blocks, -c) 0 data seg size (kbytes, -d) unlimited file size (blocks, -f) unlimited max locked memory (kbytes, -l) unlimited max memory size (kbytes, -m) unlimited open files (-n) 10240 pipe size (512 bytes, -p) 1 stack size (kbytes, -s) 8192 cpu time (seconds, -t) unlimited max user processes (-u) 512 virtual memory (kbytes, -v) unlimited If any one knows how I can apply these ulimit settings to the oracle user I have created to allow me to install sqlplus and therefore create a db, that would be great.